Film

The new film from the acclaimed Japanese animator spans 30 years and centers on a young man who dreams of designing the perfect airplane in the early 1930s.

David O. Russell, director of American Hustle and Silver Linings Playbook, first spoke with Terry Gross back in 1994. On Thursday, he tells her that after 20 years, he's finally met his aspirations.

Claude Lanzmann's documentary profiles a Viennese rabbi put to work in a Czech concentration camp. Although Benjamin Murmelstein was himself not a free man, he was despised by fellow Jewish prisoners.

"New Orleans buries too many of its young," Wynton Marsalis says in the documentary's introduction. The Whole Gritty City, airing Saturday on CBS, follows young students who take refuge in New Orleans marching bands.

George Clooney's film tells the largely true story of a World War II squad of art experts assigned to protect European masterworks from Nazi theft and Allied bombardment. Critic David Edelstein says the film is engaging and earnest, but a little formulaic.

Gloria is a new film from Chile that centers on a late-middle-aged divorced woman whose life is full of ambiguity. She's played by Paulina Garcia, who won the top acting prize — the Silver Bear — at the 2013 Berlin Film Festival, where the movie was a surprise hit. It opens this week in New York and Los Angeles, and wider next month.

Tom Clancy's wonkish spy returns in a new thriller from Kenneth Branagh, with Star Trek's Chris Pine in the title role and the director playing a menacing Russian bad guy out to bring the U.S. to its knees.

As we approach the third anniversary of the demonstrations in Egypt, Fresh Air critic John Powers reviews a documentary that captures the story of Cairo's Tahrir Square. He says the film "is less a final reckoning than an exciting bulletin from the front lines of an unfinished revolution."

A new film explores the affair between Dickens and a young actress for whom he left his wife, but who for years never showed up in biographies of Dickens. It's the second film directed by Ralph Fiennes, who also plays Dickens.

When it came to turning her children's book into a movie, Thompson says, P.L. Travers was patronizing, demeaning, rude, and "reminded me of Margaret Thatcher." Thompson plays the acerbic author in Saving Mr. Banks.

In 2013, "you really feel as if directors are taking chances in their storytelling," says film critic David Edelstein. He loved the movie Her, and says the biggest surprises of the year were All Is Lost and Much Ado About Nothing. He also explains why 12 Years a Slave didn't make his top 10.

The film Her, written and directed by Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich), follows a lonely man who falls in love with a computer operating system. Critic David Edelstein says it's the best film of the year by far. (Recommended)

In a sequel, Ron Burgundy makes the leap from local to national news. "We felt like we needed to jack up the stakes," says director and co-writer Adam McKay. He and star Will Ferrell join Terry Gross to talk about making movies -- and that epic 'statche.

Inside Llewyn Davis -- starring Oscar Isaac and a disobedient cat -- is the latest from the filmmaking duo. The brothers talk with Fresh Air's Terry Gross about their writing process ("It's mostly napping") and the cult status of their 1998 film The Big Lebowski ("How do you explain that? I have no idea."

A pair of con artists and their FBI wrangler go after political corruption in American Hustle, inspired by the Abscam scandal of the '70s. Critic David Edelstein says the film, directed by Davide O. Russell, is "a bit of a hustle itself" -- and still a hell of a ride.

Redford says filming All Is Lost was a "pure cinematic experience -- the way films used to be." He talks with Fresh Air's Terry Gross about how it's been "sort of weird" being known for his good looks, and about how he nearly wasn't cast in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

This weekend, AMC begins showing the final episodes of its acclaimed drama series, and launches a new one: Low Winter Sun. Meanwhile, HBO presents its newest made-for-TV movie — this one a comedy, starring and co-written by Larry David.

Novelist Delia Ephron says that losing her older sister Nora was like "losing an arm." But for all their collaboration and closeness, Delia writes about the complications of sisterhood in her new collection of autobiographical essays, Sister Mother Husband Dog (etc.).

Brothers Joel and Ethan Coen continue to mine American pop culture in their latest film. It's 1961 in Greenwich Village, and a homeless folk singer is trying desperately to break out. Critic David Edelstein says the overarching tone of the film is snotty, condescending, and cruel.